Nomorecredit's Personal Finance Blog

Our fight to get out of debt once and for all.

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Anonymous

My husband and I live in NY, and as of writing this I'm not sure how much we owe on credit cards, but I will get to that later. I'm hoping that as I'm writing this blog, putting it all down in writing will help.

Archive for March, 2008

I got a thing in the mail today.... guess our escrow account is underfunded or something... I'm going to have to call because I don't fully understand the document, but from reading it, it seems we have two options. One is pay $205.19 which covers the shortage, and our mortgage payment will still get higher, from $767.45 up to $781.50. It's only a few bucks, but that stinks! The second option is they work the extra money on top of our new higher payment which would be $798.60 which is $31.50 extra a month. >: ( I know $31.00 might not seem like a lot to most people, but who wants to have their mortgage payment go up like that every stinking month for the next year?!

So the new payments go into effect on May 1. That means I either 1) can try my hardest and save $205 by May 1st (nearly impossible right now) or 2) take the $205 out of my beloved funded $1000 EF, which since this isn't technically an "emergency" but I'd rather have the payment go up approximately $15 than $30. I can't decide what to do. Maybe our state refund check will come in by then (geeze, where the heck is it?!) and I can use it for that, but I'm not going to bank on it.

DH has one credit card. $300 limit. I know the last time I paid it (march) I sent in $16. I've pretty much been paying the minimum being that we have much higher interest rates on other cards.

So I wanted him to make sure the check cleared. So he called and listened to the automated system. He asked me if I paid if off because he said there was a balance owed of $8. I had been thinking of paying it off just to get rid of the annoying bill, but the $300 went to a higher interest rate. So I looked at my check register to double check that it wasn't paid off (didn't think I did, but...) so I told him that he has to speak to someone to figure out what was going on. The customer service guy said that there was an $11 check, a $5 check and a $251.31 check and ALL of them cleared on March 5th. Then I started panicking, thinking that I decided to pay it off and didn't. Logged on to the internet banking site, nope, nothing but the $16 check that I had sent cleared. I then got on the phone with the guy and he explained to me that there was only $8 owed on the account, blah, blah, blah.

I asked if there was a way he could tell me what account it was paid from, etc. He said that he'd have to transfer me to a supervisor and the supervisor could tell me where the money came from.

But I was on hold for like 15 minutes and didn't get anybody on the other line, so I figured I'd call back later when it's not using up our cell phone minutes (we don't have a landline)

So yes, I'm REALLY confused as to what is going on... Is there a magic credit card fairy!?!?

The tax return money came just in time! I shudder to think what we would have done this month without it.

Put $1000 in the bank for the EF. Glad that's done, nice to know it's there and gives me peace of mind. Paid my mom the $500 I owed her back, so that's taken care of. Paid off $3,000 on the waMu card, plus the $300 I would have paid on it this month, so I'm down $3,300 on that and excited to see my next statement with my new much lower monthly payment : ) Haven't figured out what I'm going to do with the rest of it, but I'll probably wind up putting it on the WaMu card too. Then when we get back the $900 state refund and the $1,200 I guess we'll get from the govt's tax stimulus dealie, that's another $2,100 off the WaMu card too. Yay!

We still have so much to pay off and so much debt, but hopefully I can sleep a lot better knowing it's not as bad as it was... just keep plugging away.

So I'm sitting here with a spreadsheet with the refund from our federal tax return.... It was so nice logging on the the online banking and seeing all that money in there! I wish I could just hold on to it. But of course it's going towards debt.

So I transferred a little under $1,000 to the savings, so the EF is covered. Woo! Then subtracted the check for my mom, which she will be happy to get. Now I have to figure out how much goes towards the WaMu card and if I'm going to use the whole amount or use like $500 to pay off other stuff. I think I might dump it all on the WaMu card, being that it's the hardest to pay and that it will be easier to pay off a $136 balance on a store credit card just by using income and not the refund and harder to pay off thousands using income! So that's what I'll do. I should do it right now before I get any crazy ideas about the money. I've never had this much money in the bank, and with one months' time, it will be gone! All towards debt. How sad it has to be that way.

My husband was in a car accident with my jeep. Someone slammed into him (he's okay).... at least it's drivable though. So now of course I have to get it fixed because there's a lien on the vehicle, but if I had my way I would be taking the $2,000 check from the insurance company and buying a new blinker and a bumper and quarter panal from the junk yard (don't care about the color) and just slap it on there... as long as it drives, I don't care how it looks. But the check is made out to me and the bank, so it's got to be fixed through a shop. Hrmph. So I have a $500 deductible on the insurance, AND I don't have a rental car thing on my insurance. But it was 100% the other guy's fault, so I'm told I'll get that money back. But I don't know what to do about the rental car, because I don't know if I have a CC with enough room to put a rental car on for 4 days and wait for the reimbursement. Hrmph. Oh well, I'm sure it will work out.

In other news, we got a new foster dog from the shelter. Poor dog lived outside all his life with not much human contact. He's a sweetie pie, despite having no manners, no training, not the least bit housebroken, is scared of being on a leash. But I'm sure in two months or so, he's going to make a great dog for a family as there's not an ounce of aggression in him. I love fostering dogs... (the shelter pays for food and vet bills, btw) I look forward to the day when we're financially stable enough to OWN two dogs though!